Wired up the quantum way

NEVER mind what quantum computers might look like: how on earth do you wire the things up? It's a serious problem for the scientists trying to build them. But now Boris Blinov and colleagues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, have found a solution.

In their scheme, each of the computer's quantum bits or qubits of information is stored in the energy state of an ion. This design has already proved its worth, and a simple one-ion version is up and running. But making a more powerful quantum computer means using more ions, and finding some way to wire them together.

Blinov has discovered that hitting the ion with a laser pulse made it emit a photon carrying an exact copy of the qubit's information. If the information in the photon is manipulated, this change is transmitted back to the ion (Nature, vol 428, p 153). The laws of ...

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